Vintage Tractors

Vintage cars get a lot of attention every summer at a car shows and in museums but in rural America the pride of the barn is grandfather’s original tractor maintained in top working order.

Restored vintage tractors show up at county fairs and in vintage tractor clubs across America.

Allis-Chalmers, Case, Caterpillar, Farmall and International Harvester, Fergunson, Ford, John Deere, Massey Harris, Minneapolis Moline, Oliver and other brands are well represented by tractor clubs and vintage tractor shows. One website dedicated to old tractors lists 86 different tractor clubs in the USA.

A new series of photographs and watercolors of vintage tractors by artist/photographer Edward M. Fielding documents these amazing workhorse machines in all of their mechanical glory.

A vintage Allis-Chalmers tractor by Edward M. Fielding. Water color from original photograph taken at the Cornish Fair in New Hampshire.

Landscape featuring an old vintage tractor still in use haying a field in Etna, New Hampshire. Watercolor from original photograph by Edward M. Fielding

Detail of an old John Deere tractor steering wheel and controls. Watercolor from original photograph by Edward M. Fielding

Front of an old International Harvester vintage tractor.

Grill of an old rusty Oliver tractor, watercolor from an original photograph by Edward M. Fielding.

The Nuffield tractor story started in early 1945. The British government still reeling from the effects of the war on the economy, approached the Nuffield organization to see if they would design and build an “ALL NEW” British built wheeled tractor, suitable for both British and world farming. The offer was placed just at the right time, since Morris-Motors of Birmingham were carrying out a policy of centralization, and the Wolsley car production had been moved to Cowley in Oxfordshire-thereby leaving factory space at the Birmingham plant vacant.

In 1909 Fate organized the Plymouth truck company, building motor trucks under the trade name “Plymouth”. The organization wasn’t a great success and the Plymouth Truck Company went out of business in 1915, after building fewer than 200 trucks and a single car.